KARACHI, Sept 21: Nearly all the localities of the city experienced prolonged power breakdowns on Wednesday as the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation sought to repair the electricity cables damaged by other civic agencies.

Irate consumers called the Dawn office to find out why the army-run power utility was tight-lipped about the cause of power breakdowns that continued for hours.

A resident of Federal B Area, Block 15, said his locality had experienced as many as five power breakdowns by Wednesday evening. “At least three times the breakdowns continued for more than an hour. Other times it lasted for around 20 minutes. And this has been going on for the past three days. If there is something wrong with the transmission and distribution system of the KESC, it must take its consumers into confidence. I suggest the Sindh governor, Dr Ishratul Ibad, take note of prolonged power breakdowns across the city and look into the affairs of the KESC,” he said.

A resident of Defence Phase VI, Khayaban-i-Rahat, said her locality, as well as adjoining areas, had been without electricity for the past few hours. “I just received a call from someone on Zamzama, and she says her locality is also without electricity. If it’s a major power breakdown, the KESC should announce what has caused it,” she said.

Calling from Garden East a resident said that his locality had been without electricity for more than four hours — from 10am to around 3.30pm. “This cannot be loadshedding because the KESC staff at our regional complaint centre say they are carrying out loadshedding for only one hour.

“According to our regional complaint centre, when demand for electricity increases its supply the power utility carries out loadshedding on a rotational basis,” he said.

He added that it was beyond him why the KESC had not announced a loadshedding schedule while regional complaint centres were telling consumers that the power utility was carrying out loadshedding to meet the increased demand of electricity. He said he also had no idea what had caused the city’s power demand to go up.

A resident of Malir’s Saudia Colony said that the locality had no power for two hours in the morning and for two hours in the evening.

At 11pm a resident from the DHA’s Khayaban-i-Sehr, Street 5, rang up to say that there had been no power supply since 11am.

Localities which also experienced prolonged power breakdowns on Wednesday included Shah Faisal Colony, North Nazimabad, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Kharadar, New Karachi/North Karachi, Sector 14/A Shadman Town, Garden East, Dhoraji Colony, Bahadurabad and Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Defence, Clifton, Sultanabad and Sohrab Goth.

A spokesman for the KESC said many power cables had lately been damaged by civic agencies such as the Frontier Works Organization, Karachi Water and Sewerage Board and the Pakistan Telecommunication Company.

“When we recently drew the attention of an FWO official to the severing of power cables by his workers, he said that those who worked also made mistakes.

“What these organizations do not seem to realize is that by damaging underground cables, they force the KESC to undertake repair works for days. Since we cannot switch off areas whose underground cables have been damaged in one way or another, what we do is that we backfeed these areas on a rotation basis. This means switching off the power supply of one area to provide electricity to another area,” he said.

The KESC spokesman said that at the moment the city was facing a grave power crisis which the KESC was trying to resolve at the earliest.